Suppose a company doctored data, misrepresented study findings, replaced observations with computer simulations and hired PR flacks to promote its new “wonder drug.” News stories, congressional hearings and subpoenas would be in overdrive. Fines and jail sentences would follow. And rightly so.

Fri, Jun 19, 2009

Free porn sites are all over the Internet now, with zero restrictions or minimal electronic barriers against curious children who might be in for a very crude shock within seconds, just with the still photos on the home page.

As we flounder at the bottom (?) of a nasty recession, I am astounded by the message that seems to permeate from Washington: everything can be accomplished, and except for a few Americans who make excessive amounts of money (the President's thought), everything is basically free. Any and all problems will be fixed by our Uncle Sam and because you are a loving niece/nephew, it's all on him. Astounding but apparently true, for now, as I see it once I removed my rose colored glasses.

President Obama killed a fly during an interview with CNBC's John Harwood. Left-leaning media immediately proclaimed the slapping of the fly as further proof that Obama is a mystical being - not just your average run-of-the-mill President of the United States.

The more we learn about the White House's summary firing of AmeriCorps' inspector general, Gerald Walpin, the more it smells of lawlessness, cronyism and a flagrant disregard for transparency and government accountability.

Thu, Jun 18, 2009

I’ve clipped and accumulated about a hundred news articles, decreasing in size and moving further back in the pages week to week, about the first political hostages of the Obama administration, the two reporters who work for Al Gore’s TV network.

Last week I wrote about the serious risks which older Americans and those seriously or terminally ill face in the so-called "efficiencies" which President Obama and congressional Democrats say will fund a large part of their health care plans.

Following the shootings of a Kansas abortion doctor and a guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, two prominent New York Times columnists, Paul Krugman and Frank Rich, spoke out forcefully against those in the media who spout lies and, possibly, incite violence.

The cool detachment of President Obama about the events in Iran is a huge stain on the young presidency, but one that could still be erased if the president and his secretary of state move quickly to speak in clear statements about the rightness of the cause of the protestors

In his speech in Cairo earlier this month, President Obama essentially bought into the Arab position on Israel—that the creation of the Jewish state in the Middle East was a result of European guilt for the Holocaust.

There are no legal grounds for prosecuting Bush administration lawyers who supported the use of enhanced interrogation techniques to thwart planned terrorist attacks, so civil libertarians have the tort system to try to ruin Bush lawyers.

It's finally starting to happen. For months, I've irritated many conservatives by telling them that, like it or not, Barack Obama had high approval ratings, and that most Americans were so enamored with the president that there was no use in attacking him yet.

The big question about the latest "election" in Iran isn't whether it was rigged. The candidates were screened by the theocracy from the start, and the more active members of the opposition jailed before the first votes were cast.

Within a matter of weeks, the great state of California will be out of money. For months state leaders have warned of the yawning $24 billion budget deficit; even exploiting the deficit they created in a failed attempt to scare voters into increasing their taxes in the May special election. The proposed tax increases and budget gimmickry were soundly rejected by voters, sending a clear message to Sacramento that Californians will no longer finance the bloated, inefficient government’s insatiable appetite for more tax dollars. Now the day of reckoning is upon California, and how the Golden State resolves this massive problem will impact the entire nation.

How many Americans, enamored with über-Lefty Barack Obama’s promise of “hope” and “change” have stopped to consider what America will look like when made over in the liberal ideal? One need only look at GM and Chrysler to see what this presages for the rest of private enterprise in this country.

e're not ready as a country, as a people, to have President Obama and his congressional minions shove down our throats a new, costly, coercive plan for reordering the way we care of ourselves, or for that matter don't care.

Hard as it may be, we should always refuse the temptation to get cynical about politics. No matter how many times we have failed, we should always expect and demand honesty, justice and fairness from our leaders.

Most adult Americans learn from the experience of living. Almost all of them conclude that our ancestor Ben Franklin got it right, centuries ago, when he said “… in this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.” Now, unless a significant majority of Americans figure it out - and promptly execute a massive ‘shout-out’ - founder Franklin’s prescient statement will need amending. That’s because government intervention in yet another arena of American life - our private health care system - is on a political track that will affect everyone living in the United States.

Back when I was on the receiving end of racial discrimination, it was to me not simply a personal misfortune, or even the misfortune of a race, it was a moral outrage. But not everyone who went through such an experience sees it that way.

For those who look to "world opinion," "the opinion of mankind," or to the United Nations for moral guidance or for coming to the aid of victims of oppression, the past few days and presumably the next few days in Iran, provide yet another example of their uselessness.

The National Bureau of Economic Research released a study to be published soon in the American Economic Journal that shows women's happiness has measurably declined since 1970. It's no surprise that this has stimulated much comment.

When Barack Obama won the election last year, enjoying the adulation of not only millions of devoted followers, but of an overwhelming majority of those in the media, conventional wisdom was that it would be hard for those in Congress to oppose him.

On May 15, 2009 the best political analyst in the Washington press corps, Dan Balz of the Washington Post wrote a front pager about Nancy Pelosi's assertion that the CIA had lied to Congress about torture.

There are times, I must confess, when I consider our current culture and conclude that the Muslims are right about us. We are, as they insist, hedonistic, and far too many of us do have the morals of goats. We do rely on sex and violence for our entertainment. Our popular music is swinish. We are, by a wide margin, the world’s largest market for drugs, both of the legal and illegal variety. Our politicians are selfish, ignorant and, more often than not, at odds with the American ideals of the Founding Fathers.

Mr. Obama, your speech in Cairo encouraged me to reconsider my thoughts on how I view Islam as a religion in today’s society. I have really thought it over and decided to fully accept Islam … with just a few caveats.

Sun, Jun 14, 2009

Those that try to make the wrong act at the museum make sense – give it to much credence – it was simply wrong. The words of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. came to my mind, “The time is always right to do what is right.”

It's been 15 years since President Clinton's health care reform plan went down to defeat, and the problems it was supposed to fix have only gotten worse. Costs have soared, the number of uninsured has risen and public dissatisfaction has mounted.

Missile defense has been a political issue since President Reagan introduced his plan to win the arms race by rebuilding our arsenal while using technology to prevent a successful Russian nuclear attack against us.

Why is it that so many Americans are enamored of the title “czar” these days, and why are we the people apparently so willing to sit idly by while various areas of national turf become autocratic fiefdoms?